I have upgraded my rig to ‘Extreme’ mainly due to the Graphics Cards (here) I am now running in SLI. Also I demand a high performing rig, my motto is ‘if you can’t turn all the settings on, it’s time to upgrade, simple!’.

I mainly play FPS games and some of my favorites are (Stalker, Metro 2033 & Battlefield 3), I also seem to be unusual in that I dont just play these games I finish almost all of them! This has obviously seen me sat in front of my PC for many a year and in that time I have learnt a great deal of what makes up a great gaming rig…

Well the Antec Twelve Hundred V3 case served me well, but after some 6+ months I have updated my case to the awesome Thermaltake Level 10 GT. The case brings amazing styling, great cooling and good acoustics, this coupled with the ability to fit E-ATX form factor motherboards meant that once reviewed it was never destined to leave.

The headset hanger, fan/LED controller, hot swap drive bays and the ability to fit both a single 120mm radiator and a dual 240 radiator really are the icing on the cake…

The power supply for a high end gaming rig such as this needs to do a little more than just work. Most importantly it needs to remain stable and deliver constant voltages to all of the components of the rig all while the rig is heavily overclocked. The Corsair AX1200 seems to do this without breaking a sweat, although the 1200W version of the AX range is a little overkill for this rig it ensures that the PSU is never under excess load and also remains relatively cool. To date the PSU has performed faultlessly and I would buy another, but quality does come at cost…

After experiencing the annoying multi-boot problem of the Asus P8P67 Pro, I couldn’t wait to find a replacement, but I had to wait some time before I was to find one! Finally a worthy candidate arrived in the shape of the MSI Z68A-GD80 G3 (I know bit of a mouthful that one). After reviewing the board in January and finding it to be everything that I was looking forr (looks good, high quality & high performance and surprisingly good value for money) it was destined to not leave my rig. Using this board I was ablee to overclock my power hungry 2500K to 4.9GHz without issue and my system remained super stable too, what more can I say…

The CPU really is a stunner due to it’s stock (3.3GHz) performance being stunning and its overclocked performance (up to 4.9GHz) being out of this world. Paying an additional £100 for the Core-i7 2600K will also net you no real benefit for gaming. We have proven in this article that really you don’t even need to run the CPU at much more than 4.3GHz. My rig is now running at 4.327GHz (using a 103 Base Clock) by utilizing the ‘Asus optimal’ setting in the ASUS P8P67 BIOS. What more can I say other than awesome, maybe I should buy a spare…

My previous cooler (Corsair A50) was a great cooler at a great price, but was never gonna win any design awards! When the Zalman CNPS11X Extreme was reviewed and it cooled better than the A50 I decided that it would just have to stay in my rig. Although more expensive than the A50 it’s a great looking cooler and with its increased cooling performance it’s sure to be a winner.

Having tested this 8GB kit during a recent review and being impressed by its performance, it was finally time to upgrade to 8GB. Although it wasn’t really the additional 4GB that persuaded be it was the lights! 😉 – Video here

I never thought that I would change my pair of Palit GTX 580s, but after reviewing the Hazro HZ27C monitor (2560×1440) and keeping it, I was on the lookout for more graphics horsepower! The answer was x2 MSI GTX580 Lightning Xtremes (review here/SLI article here), not only did the additional GPU Core & Memory overclocks deliver more performance but more importantly these cards are equipped with 3GB of VRAM, a must for high resolution gaming…

My previous SSD was the impressive Crucial C300 128GB and this served me well for a number of months, but I must admit the capacity was becoming difficult to work with.

Then along came the Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD for review and quite frankly once it was in my rig it was never going leave ;-). The stunning performance (555MB/s Read & 510MB/s Write) along with the far better capacity was enough to win me over. But combine this with the extras in the bundle and the deal was easily sealed…

After testing the Hazro HZ27WC the monitor was destined for only on place and that was on my desk. I’m very impressed by this monitor and it makes my old Dell look rather dull by comparison. The vibrancy of the colours and the sheer brilliance and clarity of the screen meant that I could just never part with it after the review. At the time of the review this monitor was £380, at that price I think it’s a steal…

I never thought that there was going to be a keyboard that would make me change from my beloved SteelSeries Merc Stealth. Well that was until I reviewed the Corsair Vengeance K60 keyboard. After being really impressed with this keyboard (READ: higher scores in BF3 (even MVPs)) I continued to use it instead of the Merc Stealth, and now a week+ later I can’t go back!

After reviewing 2 fantastic mice (Cyborg R.A.T. 9 & SteelSeries Sensei) one was gonna stay and in the end the Cyborg R.A.T. 9 won, but only just! Not only is the R.A.T. 9 an amazingly customizable mouse, not only is its performance unmatched, but it is also wireless. Now that I have sampled such an amazing wireless mouse it’s now hard to go back…

After my old Razer Barracuda eventually gave up the ghost after about 4 years of service it was time to buy a new headset. Even though I had recently reviewed the Razer Carcharias and the Corsair HS1 headsets, I ended up buying a pair of ROCCAT Kaves. Within days of trialling this headset (Eric lent me his) I was convinced the the feeling of spacial awareness in game was definitely better than any headset that I had used in the past. More here…